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ITEM CA10
CABINET
– 7 MARCH 2006
WHITE
PAPER: HIGHER STANDARDS, BETTER SCHOOLS FOR ALL
Report by
Director for Children, Young People & Families
Introduction
- The Schools White
Paper "Higher Standards, Better Schools for All - more choice for parents
and pupils" was published by the DfES on the 25 October 2005. As a White
Paper it is not a consultative document although this does not preclude
views on the contents being sent to the Secretary of State. Its publication
precedes the drawing up of a Bill, the timing of which is at present
uncertain.
- The purpose of
this report is to provide an overview of the contents of the White Paper
and then to focus on those proposals which indicate a change in the
role of local authorities. Those proposals are primarily associated
with the provision of school places in response to parental wishes;
the establishment of Trust Schools; and admissions arrangements. An
indication is given as to how these proposals may impact in Oxfordshire.
- The report also
provides a basis for the Cabinet to consider how to respond to the three
motions relating to the White Paper (reproduced in Annex
1) which the Council on 10 January referred
to the Cabinet, via the Children’s Services Scrutiny Committee, to advise
the Council at its 4 April meeting. A draft of this report is to be
considered by the Children’s Services Scrutiny Committee on 28 February
and their comments will be reported to the Cabinet.
Overview
- The White Paper
sets out a description of recent educational changes with proposals
for the future. Its ambitions are to be welcomed and include raising
standards for all – especially amongst the least advantaged; helping
parents engage with the education of their children; dealing with schools
which are "coasting"; overcoming the negative effects of poor behaviour;
and breaking the link between poverty and low aspiration. To this end
schools should have the freedom to tailor the way they manage themselves,
and the teaching and support they offer, to the needs and talents of
individual pupils and their parents. A system designed around the needs
of children requires the implementation of integrated services for children,
families and young people.
- To realise the
ambitions of the White Paper the extensive proposals are to:
- Enable every
school to become a self-governing Trust school, with the benefit of
new freedoms;
- Continue to
promote Academies, with at least 200 established or planned by 2010;
- Create a new
Office of the Schools Commissioner to promote the development of Trust
schools;
- Enable parents
to demand new schools and new provision, backed by a dedicated stream
of capital funding;
- Encourage existing
schools to expand and form federations, establish sixth forms and
make it easier for independent schools to enter the state system;
- Give the weakest
schools a year to improve or face closure, with a stronger role for
the local authority in tackling failure and underperformance;
- Boost the autonomy
and performance of all schools with less bureaucracy, and lighter
touch inspection for highly successful schools;
- Provide more
personalised learning for those pupils who have fallen behind, have
special talents, or who are at risk of underachievement;
- Give clear and
unambiguous legal rights for headteachers and teachers to discipline
pupils backed by the expectation that every school will have a clear
set of rules and sanctions. Parents will be responsible for excluded
pupils for the first five days and local authorities will provide
full time education from the sixth. By 2007 all secondary schools
will form partnerships to improve the management of behaviour and
have admissions protocols for ‘hard to place’ pupils;
- Enhance the
role of governing bodies. A new statutory duty will be placed on governing
bodies to have regard to the views of parents. Parent Councils will
be encouraged;
- Reform teachers’
professional standards which will set out what can be expected of
teachers throughout their careers and make performance management
"more effective";
- Place on a statutory
footing the requirement that schools have regard to the local authority’s
Children and Young People’s Plan. By 2008 half of primary schools
and a third of secondary schools are expected to provide access to
extended services, with all schools doing so by 2010. Schools are
reminded that they have a statutory duty to safeguard and promote
the welfare of children, including playing their part in multi-agency
work to protect them. By 2010 all partnerships of schools will have
a full time school nurse appointed by Primary Care Trusts;
- Require schools
to give information on pupils’ progress to parents at least three
times a year. Materials will be provided for parents to support their
children’s learning at home and home school agreements will be updated
and re-launched.
The
role of the local authority – a school system shaped by parents
- A central theme
of the White Paper is that there is a determination to transform the
school system into one that responds better to the needs and aspirations
of parents.
"Our
goal is no less than to transform our schools’ system by turning it
from one focussed on the success of institutions into one which is shaped
and driven by the success, needs and aspirations of parents and pupils…and
the nation needs to ensure that areas of underperformance which undermine
our efforts to improve social mobility are tackled vigorously".
- The role for local
authorities will be that of strategic leaders of their communities to
help those communities articulate their needs and ensure that the pattern
of local services matches up to their vision and aspirations. They will
act as the commissioners of services and the champion of users. Local
authorities will support new schools and new provision where there is
a real demand or where existing provision is poor. This is a very different
role from acting as direct provider of school places and the White Paper
recognises that in many ways it is more challenging.
- Local authorities
will be placed under a new statutory duty to promote choice, diversity
and fair access, to underpin this role as commissioner and champion
of pupils and parents. Local authorities will need to plan how many
schools their area needs, where and how big they need to be, what kind
of schools will serve the area best, and who the schools should serve.
Local authorities will draw on analysis of parental demand and their
consultation with local partners to draw up a strategic plan for the
pattern of schools in their area, as part of their Children and Young
People’s Plan.
- The present duty
to hold a competition for providers where a new secondary school is
required will be extended to cover primary schools as well. If no suitable
promoter can be found, authorities may publish their own proposals for
a Foundation school. School Organisation Committees are to be abolished;
their powers to decide whether proposals for new schools and for major
changes are accepted will be transferred to the local authority. In
future all new or replacement schools will be Foundation, Trust, Voluntary
Aided or where appropriate Academies. So there would be no new community
schools.
- All existing primary
and secondary schools will be encouraged to become self governing and
acquire a Trust, i.e. not-for-profit charitable organisations able,
if they wish, to appoint a majority of governors. The governing body
of an existing school will be able to create its own Trust.
- Trust schools,
like Foundation schools, will employ their own staff, control their
own assets and set their own admission arrangements (subject to the
Admissions Code of Practice). Trusts will be able to apply to the Secretary
of State for flexibilities including curriculum flexibilities and freedoms
over pay and conditions of staff. Trusts would be charities regulated
by the Charity Commission, and would be under a duty to promote community
cohesion and good race relations. Trust schools will be funded as other
local schools, subject to the Code of Practice on admissions and to
all the accountability mechanisms that apply to other state schools.
- A new Office of
the Schools Commissioner will act as a national champion for the development
of Trust schools by linking authorities to Trusts and challenging authorities
that fail to exercise their new duties adequately. The Commissioner
will also monitor key local indicators of parental satisfaction and
rising school standards, and publish an Annual Report.
- Parents will be
able to ask for a new primary or secondary school to improve standards,
to meet a lack of faith provision, to tackle entrenched inequalities
or to promote innovative teaching methods. Local authorities will be
under a duty to be responsive to parents’ interests, deciding whether
a proposal to establish a new school should be taken forward or whether
the demands can be met in better ways. Parents will have the right of
appeal to the Schools’ Adjudicator if their proposals are rejected.
Capital funding will normally be provided through existing programmes
but a dedicated capital fund will be established to support strong and
innovative proposals from parents.
- Oversubscribed
schools will be encouraged to expand or enter into joint ventures or
mergers. Local authorities will be expected to move quickly to close
any schools that are failing to attract sufficient pupils in the event
of surplus capacity arising from the creation of new schools or expansion
of popular schools. Local authority powers to tackle school failure
will be strengthened (including immediate closure).
- Oxfordshire is
likely to develop new secondary provision in Didcot, Bicester, Wantage/Grove
and new primary schools in Banbury, Upper Heyford and Didcot. Depending
on the proposals these developments may be subject to a competition.
At the same time the Learning & Skills Council will have a greater
role in providing new 16-19 provision and funding. Together with the
White Paper this would suggest the need to work together to develop
a clear strategic plan which is agreed following widespread consultation
with parents in the local authority’s role as commissioner of services.
This would be the measure by which all proposals, whether from local
authority, school or parent, would be judged. In that sense schools
cannot just do as they please. However this will not stop proposals
coming forward, from popular schools or other proposals which have parental
support, which contradict local authority plans. It may be difficult
for such proposals to be resisted leaving the local authority to deal
with additional surplus places created elsewhere. Similarly, parent
or religious groups might bring a proposal forward which if successful
could cause another school to close. Thus there is a requirement to
have a robust planning process scrutinised by the Schools Commissioner
to promote choice and diversity, but which at the same time will make
school planning more difficult, particularly in urban areas.
The role
of the local authority – choice and access for all
- Local authorities
will be expected to improve the information they provide parents on
how to compare secondary schools. By 2008 funding will be provided to
enable every local authority to have a network of choice advisers in
place.
- Authorities will
be expected to consider all home-to-school and other transport as part
of this new duty to support choice, diversity and fair access. Legislation
will be introduced (although not costed in the White Paper) to entitle
those eligible to free school meals or in receipt of the maximum level
of Working Tax Credit to have free transport to any of the three suitable
secondary schools closest to their home, where these schools are between
two and six miles from their home. Because of geography of Oxfordshire,
the full extent of these options will not be available to all parents
and children. There is a risk that some of the most disadvantaged children
will have less access and choice.
- The new system
will be underpinned by fair admissions in order to extend choice and
open access for more parents. There will be a new Admissions Code of
Practice. Foundation, Voluntary Aided and Trust schools will be free
to use the approach to fair admissions that they think will best suit
their local circumstances, as long as it is compatible with the Admissions
Code. It will be easier to introduce banding arrangements, where appropriate,
based on the local or national ability range to achieve an all-ability
intake. All proposals for new schools will need to include proposed
admissions arrangements, showing how these will promote community and
social integration and choice.
- Local authorities
will be able to specify the community to be served by a new school and
will have the power to modify proposed admissions arrangements to bring
them in line with the Code of Practice. All popular and successful schools
which expand will have to prove to the local authority that their admissions
arrangements are in line with the Code – including that arrangements
work to the benefit of all local children and families.
- In Oxfordshire
there is significant cooperation between the various admissions authorities.
In 2005, 94.83% of children were offered their first preference secondary
school and 97.24% for primary schools. The creation of a larger number
of admissions authorities making different autonomous decisions will
be confusing for parents and may work against the disadvantaged. Proposals
for local authorities to monitor fair practice in the admission and
appeal arrangements are welcomed.
Conclusion
- In January, at
a series of meetings with the Director for Children, Young People &
Families, headteachers and governors questioned the evidence base for
the proposals and many saw them as based upon an "urban model". In addition
they saw a contradiction in the proposals in that, while schools were
promoted as being at the heart of their communities, children were being
encouraged to travel beyond their communities. Some of the central opportunities
described in the White Paper are already available, but have attracted
little interest; indeed given that the subsequent legislation will be
largely permissive rather than prescriptive, it is quite possible that
not a lot will change.
- On 6 February
the Secretary of State wrote to the chairman of the parliamentary education
select committee. It is reported that the letter indicated that key
parts of the school admissions code were to be made mandatory; a ban
on schools interviewing prospective parents; that local authorities
will be able to set up community schools; and that the assets of a Trust
school will revert to the local authority in the event of a school closing.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- The Cabinet
is RECOMMENDED to:
- note
the report; and
- consider,
in the light of the comments of the Children’s Services Scrutiny
Committee, what advice to offer the Council on the three motions.
KEITH
BARTLEY
Director for
Children, Young People & Families
Background
Papers: Nil
Contact
Officer: Geoff Jones Tel: 01865 492062
February
2006
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